The Presidential Office yesterday denounced the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for launching joint military drills around Taiwan, calling Beijing a “troublemaker.”
The condemnation came after the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command yesterday morning announced the start of a new round of joint exercises around Taiwan, featuring the army, navy, air and rocket forces to “close in” on Taiwan from “multiple directions.”
The exercises served as “a stern warning” to “Taiwan independence” separatist forces, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
As of 3pm yesterday, the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command said it had conducted drills in waters to the north, south and east of Taiwan, featuring “air interception, assault on maritime targets, strikes on ground objects, and joint blockade and control,” adding that these drills were aimed at testing troops’ capabilities in carrying out integrated operations, seizure of operational control and multidirectional precision strikes.
Condemning the exercises, the Presidential Office in a statement said that China has continued to “engage in military provocations and gray zone tactics” in the Taiwan Strait and the Indo-Pacific region.
China is “a troublemaker,” unilaterally escalating the regional situation and blatantly challenging the international order, it added.
Photo: Ministry of National Defense via AP
“China’s blatant military provocations not only threaten peace in the #Taiwan Strait but also undermine security in the entire region, as evidenced by drills near Australia, New Zealand, Japan, [South] Korea, the Philippines & the SCS. We strongly condemn China’s escalatory behavior,” the Presidential Office said in a message on the social media platform X.
The SCS refers to the South China Sea, the strategic waterway that China claims almost in its entirety. The Chinese navy also recently held drills near Australia and New Zealand for which it gave no warning, forcing the last-minute rerouting of commercial flights.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement also condemned the Chinese drills, “again challenging the rules-based international order, unilaterally and severely damaging peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and the [Indo-Pacific] region.”
Photo: CNA
The US is closely monitoring China’s military activity near Taiwan and will continue to support Taiwan in the face of Beijing’s military, economic and diplomatic pressure, a US Department of State spokesperson said yesterday.
“China has shown that it is not a responsible actor and has no problem putting the region’s security and prosperity at risk. There is no justification for China’s irresponsible threats and military pressure operations near Taiwan,” the spokesperson said.
The EU yesterday also accused China of increasing cross-strait tensions by holding military drills around Taiwan, and called on all parties to "exercise restraint."
Photo: Reuters
"China’s large-scale military drills around Taiwan are increasing cross-strait tensions," EU Foreign Affairs and Security Policy lead spokesperson Anitta Hipper said. "We
call on all parties to exercise restraint and avoid any actions that may further escalate tensions, which should be resolved through cross-strait dialogue."
Earlier yesterday, Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said the defense ministry had established a “response center” earlier that day to monitor the PLA exercises.
The ministry has been monitoring related PLA activities since Saturday, Koo added.
At an emergency press briefing later yesterday to make public the government’s response to the latest round of drills, which began at 7:30am, the ministry said that as of yesterday afternoon, it had detected 13 PLA naval vessels, four coast guard vessels and 71 military aircraft operating around Taiwan.
Among the 71, 36 crossed the Taiwan Strait median line, said Lieutenant General Hsieh Jih-sheng (謝日升), head of the ministry’s Office of the Deputy Chief of General Staff for Intelligence.
On the eastern side of Taiwan, Hsieh said that the military had identified an eight-vessel naval fleet led by the Shandong aircraft carrier operating in the Pacific Ocean about 220 nautical miles (407km) southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), the southernmost point of Taiwan proper.
Asked how close the Chinese military was, Hsieh said none of the PLA warplanes and warships had entered the nation’s contiguous zone, an area that is adjacent to territorial sea and airspace, and extends a maximum of 24 nautical miles from the coast.
The military has also not detected live-fire drills by the PLA forces, he said, adding that the military could not predict when the latest round of exercises would conclude.
The PLA’s ongoing drills are part of China’s years-long “gray zone” harassment of the country, he said.
Major General Tung Chi-hsing (董冀星), director of the ministry’s joint operations planning division, said the armed forces have established an ad hoc emergency operations center and deployed military aircraft, vessels and coastal missile systems following the PLA’s announcement of drills early yesterday.
The military is conducting patrols and monitoring Chinese troops, Tung said.
The armed forces would adjust their combat readiness level based on the level of the PLA threats, he added.
Meanwhile, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said that at about the same time the PLA Eastern Theater Command issued a statement about the drills yesterday, it detected China Coast Guard vessels 14607 and 14517 approaching Dongyin Island (東引), which is part of Lienchiang County.
The CGA dispatched vessels in response to the ships, which the China Coast Guard claimed were “conducting law enforcement patrols.”
Additional reporting by Lee I-chia
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
RSS